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Yesterday as much rain fell on South Wales in a day as normally falls in the month of May. Unseasonably cold temperatures make the British Isles rather unpleasant now; hail has fallen upon some and in London rough winds have shaken those buds brave enough to appear, even though their appearance has been delayed by the cold weather until now. Snow has fallen in Devon, once called the British Riviera in May. Centrica, owner of British gas, has sold 20% more gas to households in the past six months than it usually sells over the same period in past years.

Unusual weather is normal in the British Isles, which meet where three weather systems converge and compete for mastery. Long extended periods where the weather is abnormal changes the definition of what is normal weather. What is important to remember is that the British isles constitute a very small percentage of the surface of the earth and while the weather that we experience may lead us to believe that our climate is not warming, there are other places, including the seas and the places where no people live and where few weather measurements are taken. In the past ten years, as far as we know, global mean land temperatures have remained fairly constant but over the past a hundred years they have risen. During that hundred year period, there have been times when global mean temperatures have not risen; the graph shows a jagged rise.

During the past ten years global mean sea temperatures have risen, with an occasional fall.

What happens in your garden is not what happens in the world; heat is displaced and that displacement is a result of changes in oscillations of the sea and of the air, so that your garden (and mine) will be late but a garden in other parts of the world will be early. I fear that we are jsut experiencing the lull before the storm.